Last-minute pranks for April Fools' Day

Alison Bowen

Metro has you covered with text and app pranks.

Convince your friends that the president wants to hang out.

It’s April Fools' Day soon – no, really, it’s Monday.

Fear not! Metro has some last-minute ideas. Whether you want to best your coworkers or dial up a friend or significant other, read on for some suggestions. No comment on whether we tested these on Metro colleagues first…

The whoopee cushion is old news, say the creators of the Fart O Gram. The prank-calling service allows you to enter digits to be pranked, then calls the person and lets the flatulence rip as they pick up. Take your time choosing from the Sexy Stall or the Costume Party, where a female recording pretends to have met the prankee before and then, well, you know.

For a prank you can set up on your phone, try the Fake Text app. It crafts a message that pops up on your screen, from, perhaps, Barack Obama. All you do is download and type in the celebrity you want to drop you a line. So show your friends a text of Barack Obama inviting you to the White House. Or perhaps you met Lady Gaga at a party the night before, and she texted you to come to her next concert. See who believes it.

Another app, Prank Me, logs recorded voices — from the stomach-dropping, like Timothy Warrenton calling from the IRS to say you owe $10,000 that will soon be drafted from your paycheck, to the celeb, like Regis Philbin calling about "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The catch? The app calls your phone, so to prank someone with the recording, you have to hold your phone up to another receiver as you dial someone else.

To brainstorm, the Pranks app revolves through different plots, like hiding alarm clocks and setting them for different times or gluing a quarter to the floor and snickering as people try to pick it up.

Old-school style

If you’d rather get your hands dirty and do the prankwork yourself, get inspired by these small-screen scenarios:

We all know arriving at the office is a gift, but make it official by wrapping up an office computer and chair with that wrapping paper you bought at CVS two holiday seasons ago. This only requires beating a coworker to the office – or maybe some sneakiness when they run out for lunch. This is gem inspired by “The Office”: During their ongoing prank-off, Jim gift-wraps Dwight’s desk and everything on it.

In “New Girl,” Nick wants to prove that he’s the prank master. Although many of his shenanigans are too much work (reworking a wall so roommate Schmidt would think he was getting smaller), this one is office-effective: claim the TV (or some Pandora music) is blaring, and get your officemates in on the joke, nodding along, to make another think they are going deaf.

This prank may end in a cubemate punching a hole through the wall, if “The Office” is any indication. In one of the episodes, Jim tosses Andy’s phone through a ceiling panel, constantly calling it so it rings as Andy's blood pressure rises while struggling to find it. For a less violent reaction, you may want to hide your coworker’s phone in an easier-to-find spot, like under a file pile in a drawer or wedged behind the water cooler. Just make sure you know the number to dial.